Radiation Stinks
by whipplefilter
Summary: It's the 70s, and his war is over, though it's never felt that way. His war ended too many times for any ending to feel real. Today, he is in the desert. Los Alamos. They're only there to keep the peace, or so they've been told. AKA How Sarge met Fillmore, and why they ended up in Radiator Springs.


It's a different desert. Radiator Springs comes later, though not by much.

At the moment, Sarge's home is the National Guard. It's the 70s, and his war is over, though it's never felt that way. His war ended too many times for any of them to feel real. VE came and went and there were still good men dying, trenches burning. There were still the bombs to come, over Japan. Then the Soviets. Korea. Trouble in Vietnam. Iran could well be next. Sarge may have left active duty, but his spirit never leaves his fellow soldiers, deployed afar. You never really leave. Not after all that.

Today, he is in the desert. Los Alamos. They're only there to keep the peace, or so they've been told.

 _Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds_ whisper the buildings behind him, tongues crackling with fission and fallout.

When the agitators arrive, painted in rainbow, the VW in the front tells him, _We will become peace._

* * *

There are 1,414 protesters booted in the impound lot. They've refused bail. It's been a whole week. Sarge takes the long way home every day, northwest past the jail instead of just north.

Sometimes they sing. Sometimes they hiss–heated whispers amongst themselves; panic; chaos; principles. It's heartening, somehow, to know that the hippies can be just as confused as the rest of them. It makes them feel more real. Sarge doesn't believe in credos, and the whole world saw only months ago what happened at Jonestown. Anything remotely resembling a cult–he's out. The hippie crowd has always seemed, to him, to be a bit like that.

Of course, that's what hippies say about soldiers. Some of them say it to him when he passes.

But Sarge did not fight a war for the right to be a slave to dogma.

"Which front?" asks the VW, on a Friday. His paint, clearly a home job, is peeling at his brow and his tire in the boot is flat.

"Biffontaine," Sarge answers. It would be a lie if he said he weren't surprised.

"You know–"

"I know," says Sarge.

* * *

For six hours, 1,500 protesters scream at the top of their lungs, horns blaring, about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Less than a year after the 442nd rescues his battalion from a devastated France, the United States drops a bomb on their grandmothers back in Japan. (There's a myth about that the Toyotas of today descended from looms. Silent machines. It seems strange to imagine such a thing, but then, they all must come from somewhere.)

Two bombs. A desertful of tests. Like that, the war is over is never over.

He'd like to find a place one day, where maybe it feels like it is. Just a little place, for a little while.

Surely there's such a place.

* * *

Sarge is there when the prisoners are released. He says nothing, does nothing, but he uses his emergency brake and he stands erect and he watches all 1,414 of them discharge. What he's learned as a soldier is that more often than not, there is little honor to be had in war and unrest, regardless of what side you're on. He's still not sure that he respects these hippies, their clamorous protest, the silly (and he does, in his heart, believe it's silly) way they choose to assert their rights. But rights they are, and he's learned, as a soldier, that sometimes the best you can do is bear witness. This is the damage of the world, the chaos of history. But someone should see it. Someone should remember.

The VW is the last to depart. He seems surprised to see Sarge there, standing at attention.

"Get lost, hippie," Sarge barks.

"The name's Fillmore, man," says the VW. "But thank you for your service." He says, "Our fight's not with you, you know."

"Thank you for yours," Sarge replies. Quickly, so no one else can hear. As quickly, he salutes. Blushes. Pulls back from the curb and continues his drive home without a second glance.

 _We will become peace,_ he thinks. Over and over again, he thinks it. It's what he's always believed.

* * *

They arrive in Radiator Springs together, on a Sunday. Its clouds hold only water, and its soil no uranium.

It will never last, Sarge is certain. (And he's right. Iran erupts, like he thought it might, and the oil crisis nearly kills them all.)

But Radiator Springs is such a place–such a place as Sarge had only dreamed–if only for a while.

He is the one who suggests, "Let's stay."

* * *

 _We will become peace._


End file.
